Credit For A Needy Bank Filling Stomachs Of The Poor Of High Interest At Valley's Donated-food Warehouse

June 20, 1990|by IRENE KRAFT, The Morning Call

Most Lehigh Valley residents will never have dealings with a drab, concrete-block bank on Allentown's East Side.

There's no element of plushness inside the bank -- no marble counters or pillars, elegant paintings on the walls or brass-plated name tags on desks. Instead, the lighting is hardly adequate, the floor is a concrete slab and exposed metal beams support the structure.

Yet, for some Lehigh Valley residents, it's the most important bank in the area -- the only bank with which they can afford to do business. Some can't survive without it.

Little money flows through the hands of the people who work at this facility. Deposits, instead, are food items. Withdrawals are made by agencies that serve the Valley's needy.

Boxes of canned peaches, orange juice and spaghetti sauce and sacks of flour and cornmeal are the items of trade.

The bank is the Lehigh Valley Food Bank -- a warehouse and distribution center for agencies throughout the area that provide food to those who otherwise would go hungry.

An estimated 32 million Americans live below the poverty level, with incomes too low to provide adequate meals for their families. Many of them depend on organizations like the Lehigh Valley Food Bank to provide food assistance that helps bridge the gap between what they have and what they need to survive.

Throughout the last decade, the need for assistance has been rising steadily. In 1981, before the Lehigh Valley Food Bank existed, there were fewer than 10 emergency providers in Lehigh and Northampton counties combined.

Today, Lehigh Valley Food Bank's nearly 140 member agencies serve nearly 140,000 people. Member agencies include soup kitchens, food pantries, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, day-care and senior-citizen centers and even day camps for needy children. The figure of people served is only an estimate because it doesn't even include those helped at senior-citizens centers and the thousands of children served at day-care facilities.

"I hate the stigma that everyone who is poor and hungry lives in downtown Allentown," said Mary Ann Sarson, director of the Lehigh Valley Food Bank, which was established by the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley in 1982. "That's not true. Someone right down the street from you might need assistance.

"Poverty has been redefined over the last decade," she added. "Today's poor are young mothers, children, senior citizens and hard-working individuals who are experiencing hard times after being laid off from their jobs."

Many of today's poor have full- or part-time jobs that yield paychecks to small to support families. After paying the high rents demanded today, little remains for food or medicinal needs.

Many who rely on assistance from food-bank agencies receive no assistance from the government, like Medicare or food stamps.

"Often the stigma of accepting food from food-bank agencies hinders people from getting help," said Sarson. "They are embarrassed to ask for help. Dad may be laid off from his job but doesn't want to come to an emergency pantry for a hand-out even though the kids are very hungry."

Sarson said that even those who receive food stamps have a tough time stretching them through a month. Studies show food stamps usually run out after the third week of each month.

Often stores at which food-stamp recipients must shop are in the centers of towns where prices are higher than in suburban supermarkets where competition keeps prices down.

Some of the food supplied to the Lehigh Valley Food Bank is government surplus, according to Sarson. Some is purchased through state grants. However, most of the items "deposited" in the food bank are donated.

"If it weren't for the generosity of major food manufacturers, grocery stores and local and civic organizations, we couldn't make it," Sarson said.

For example, last year the Boy Scouts' annual "Scouting for Food" drive provided the bank with 90,000 pounds of food.

Not all items deposited in the bank come in neatly packaged cartons. Much of what is donated by major food manufacturers and grocery stores is salvage that the donor companies have decided to give to the needy rather than sort through themselves.

Food that is considered salvage often is safe to eat but does not meet manufacturers' rigid quality-control standards, according to Judy Dorward, distribution and production control manager for a Pillsbury plant in East Greenville, which recently donated eight large bins of refrigerator biscuits and cookies to the Lehigh Valley Food Bank. Cartons that are slightly damaged by a fork lift or dated items that have a third or more of their short shelf life exhausted cannot be shipped as first-quality to supermarkets, but will be welcomed by those who have little else to eat, she explained.

Sarson said food-bank employees and volunteers must not only travel to plants to pick up the salvage but also pick through punctured cans and torn packages that must be discarded to find unharmed food that can be allocated to agencies.